■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■This OP is a joint effort between me and hyperriker because what would be more apt for 2013, a year in which there will be 2 chances for Australia to regain the Ashes, than an Englishman and an Australian putting aside their obvious differences in class, charm, pureness of bloodline and chances of being eaten by a snake to deliver this, what I can only describe as, adequate OP.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■

First off, a bit for the thread newbies poking around SAS - this is a fairly cozy thread, a bunch of regulars and a few lurkers throwing their two cents in from time to time, but we only really get going when big matches are on. This year, big matches are on. We're mainly posters from England, Australia, New Zealand and a couple from India, but don't let that deter you.

Come in, try to watch games, ask questions, participate! It's basically like the rest of SAS, bunch of guys having a chat about the sport, rarely gets serious until Aussie lurkers show up and declare only Australians to be the best ever at the sport, then it's on for all money.

What the gently caress is cricket?
Imagine baseball. Now imagine baseball if you could hit the ball in any direction you liked, and the ball mustshould bounce before it reaches you. So, in addition to movement in the air, consider bounce, movement off the surface, the state of the playing surface contributing to said movement and the state of the ball. If you're still with us, you're on the right track!

- Each team has 11 players
- Two batsmen in at a time
- Fielding side has one bowler (pitcher), one wicket keeper (catcher) and the rest are in the field
- A bowler delivers 6 balls (pitches) which comprises one 'over', then another bowler will bowl the next over from the opposite end of the pitch
- Batsmen score one run by leaving the crease at one end and running to the other
- Four runs if you hit it all the way to the boundary
- Six runs if you hit it over the boundary on the full (home run)
- There are 10 ways a batsman can be out, and if he's out, he doesn't come back for the rest of the innings. Once 10 of the 11 batsmen are out, OR the batting side's captain can declare the innings closed if enough runs are scored to fit the match situation, the fielding side will then go into bat
- Each side has 2 innings per match
- To win, you must bowl the other side out (dismiss all their batsmen) in both innings, while having scored more runs than them.

If you're still confused, don't beat yourself up. Just watch this video of a dog getting vacuumed and weep gently at the quiet beauty of life for a moment.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjJtccVsiY
There, there.

Sometimes they play in white clothes, sometimes in coloured clothes!?!?

There are three 'forms' of cricket played internationally at the moment.

- Test cricket (Mainly white uniforms):
Tests are the traditional and historic form of the game. There are no over limits, and a full five days are given in which a result must be found. If there is no winner after five days, the match is drawn. Draws can be either the most dull, or the most wonderful occurrences, depending on how the match plays out (three days rained off, OR batsmen struggling to survive under immense pressure to save the match). Tests are long-form chess, they are an examination of all players on both sides, the peak of all cricket in terms of strategy, fitness and, most of all, mental discipline.

- One-day cricket (Coloured uniforms):
Born out of Kerry Packer's 'World Series Cricket' in the 1970's, one dayers reinvented the sport. There is one innings per side, and a limit of 50 overs per team, which quite often led to finishes such as this:

One dayers no longer command the interest that they used to, mainly due to teams trying to 'not lose' instead of playing for the win, but it's still hardly as bad as...

- Twenty20 cricket (Who gives a poo poo):
This is a loving gimmick, aimed straight at the untapped audience of people who don't have the attention span to appreciate even the greatest Test matches. It's just a slogfest that takes about three hours, full of boring defensive bowling and boring defensive field placements. Hardly anything that makes Test cricket interesting is found here,

"hey it's a bit of fun so whatever" Actually T20 is probably the main reason why Test cricket is struggling, because all the batsmen slog their hearts out in the Indian Premier League or the Big Bash or something, and then can't calm down and play a proper innings in a Test. All the bowlers seem to forget how to bowl a disciplined attacking line for more than 4 overs in a row. gently caress T20.

Who plays this poo poo?

England
England invented cricket and thusly is best at it. It’s a team made up of pure sporting thoroughbreds. Not gods but Englishmen, the next best thing. They are lead by their captain Alastair Cook but it is common knowledge that the real driving force behind the success is the best all rounder in the world, Timothy Bresnan. Bresnan is a man so full of steel and grit that some say the word ‘born’ is rubbed out on his birth certificate and replaced with 'forged.' Bresnan sets the standard that every other player strives to achieve when they are representing England; a country that, at the time of writing this, has never done anything bad to any country or people ever.

India
India are a team in transition. A transition from being good to being bad. The main problem for them is their obsession with the IPL and shorter forms of the game but their sheer mass of population should keep them strong enough to remain near the top of the pile for the next decade or so. If not, they can always have the BCCI complain to the ICC until the rules are changed in their favour.

New Zealand
New Zealand are like diet Australia. You think you're being healthier with the lighter alternative but you're actually giving yourself cancer through some weird artificial sweetener. Watching New Zealand play cricket is a bit like having cancer actually; it takes your health, your dreams, your hair. What a relief it must be when it comes for your life. They're not all bad, though. There is one thing they excel at; and that is losing. Some say to see New Zealand win you need 'the right kind of eyes.' If this is the case, the right kind of eyes are the eyes that see imaginary things that don't actually happen.

Pakistan
Pakistan are the most interesting team. When they’re not having their country bombed into looking like a squalid New Zealand by America they can boast a dead coach, match fixing, performance enhancing drugs, players attacking each other with bats and official statements literally featuring the words ‘genital warts’ in their recent history and for that we love them. They are an eternal mid-table team. If you’re English, think of them like an Everton or a Newcastle. If you’re American think of them like a team that finishes in the middle of the league in whatever bad sport it is you like.

West Indies
West Indies are the saddest of all teams. They were once the best team in the world and cricket was the national sport. Nowadays cricket has fallen behind less athletic pastimes like sprinting and bobsleighing. Barely capable of stringing 2 draws together now, they’re everyone’s second favourite team and the only thing they’ve won lately has been our hearts.

Australia
Initially a British penal colony, Australia's single proudest national achievement has been standing up and smashing the loving Poms in every sport on the planet[citation needed] with cricket right at the forefront[citation needed]. Apart from Heavyweight champion at Kangaroo Boxing, Captain of the Australian Test side is the highest sporting office in the country, and every match (except in Hobart, gently caress Hobart) is an event, always strongly attended and watched around the nation. Cricket is the summer sport.

South Africa
Widely regarded as one of the best sides at the moment, South Africa are doing well now they've put all the racism behind them. However good they get, they never seem to be as good as they think they are, though, and as such can be quite the little cunts. This makes for much hilarity when they inevitably choke in a one dayer or prepare a test match pitch to suit their attack only for it to backfire horribly on them.

Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka are still trying to come to terms with losing the best bowler ever to retirement which is proving difficult for them as for the last 15 years they've depended on him almost entirely. What does the future hold for Sri Lanka? Probably more cricketers with really long names.

The minnows

No this isn't actually a team but the rest of the smaller/newer cricketing playing countries who, quite frankly, don't deserve their own individual paragraph and will have to do with a line or two each and being gathered into a group named after the first swimming badge. The one you get when you swim 5 meters. I mean, you can fall over that far. That's how low these teams are regarded.

Bangladesh: For a while they seemed to be getting their poo poo together and were approaching a decent level but that seems to have petered out. They beat Australia once though lol.Ireland: Too busy getting drunk to seriously challenge the top teams.Netherlands: Too busy getting stoned to seriously challenge the top teams.Afghanistan: Too busy being invaded by America to seriously challenge the top teams.Zimbabwe: Too busy being hosed over by Robert Mugabe to seriously challenge the top teams.

The Ashes is important, even to the casual fan, and any loss to England has the Australian media crying for weeks, heads rolling amongst the playing group and/or administration and a 47% increase in kangaroo abuse cases reported. Don Bradman, who might very well be (statistically and actually) the greatest player of any sport ever, was a weapon crafted and honed by Australian cricket to gently caress England, and gently caress them he did, time and time again, and his successors did, time and time again.

Australia dominated the Ashes for a long time, mostly off the back of known drug cheat Shane Warne and chucker Glenn McGrath. Now, though, these two have retired to shag Liz Hurley and mourn dead wives, respectively.

Today we find a more humbling picture. Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey have retired, and with them they take the last remaining hopes and dreams of the nation. Australia is loving poo poo now, they can't loving bat and constantly rotate the bowling ranks trying to find something, anything that sticks together for more than five minutes. Meaning, of course, that everyone is scared of being dropped from the team, so they play like spackers when put under even the slightest pressure.

yeah Ricky, your time was up a year or two ago

Contrary to Australia’s demise, England have risen in recent years and will be heavy favourites for both series because they're just a lot better than Australia at cricket but hopefully that won't stop the Australians in this thread getting their hopes up and you never know, they might even engage in some much needed persiflage.
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

thehappyprince fucked around with this message at Apr 26, 2013 around 12:42

I predict that we will win only one of the ten Ashes test and that Alastair Cook will score at least 1200 runs. And that Kevin Pietersen will score a double century somewhere, probably Adelaide. All in all I'm not really looking forward to it.

I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question... A shitpost is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don't give it to someone lightly, that's what I would say.

Very good OP, looking forward to all the test cricket this year. Who knows what Australia will dish up in India, I predict >50 pages of BCCI/DRS rage - hopefully those cheating cunts are on the receiving end of some aboslute howlers, there is something that unites all cricket followers when watching Indian

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?

I feel the biggest issue with Australian cricket is the selectors. I've heard talk of Maxwell replacing hussey instead of khawaja. The problem is Maxwell doesn't have the greatest temperament and that would be a collapse prone top order. Even more so than now. Watson is simply terrible with the bat right now.

edit

Also could you imagine McGrath being rotated. Australia is the only country to do this crap. The last test there was the insane situation of an injured batsmen (clarke) playing while an uninjured bowler was rotated so a proven failure could pad his stats against one of the worst test teams

Burn Down Canberra fucked around with this message at Jan 1, 2013 around 06:47

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?

I feel the biggest issue with Australian cricket is the selectors. I've heard talk of Maxwell replacing hussey instead of khawaja. The problem is Maxwell doesn't have the greatest temperament and that would be a collapse prone top order. Even more so than now.

edit

Also could you imagine McGrath being rotated. Australia is the only country to do this crap. The last test there was the insane situation of an injured batsmen (clarke) playing while an uninjured bowler was rotated so a proven failure could pad his stats against one of the worst test teams

I don't mind guys like Maxwell being given a go then being sent away to deal with their deficiencies.
When better than a meaningless dead rubber where the opposition is probably still trying hard for the sake of dignity?
The rotations should cease once the bowling attack gets a bit older and can handle the workload. There must be something up with the fitness program or something with all these guys getting soft tissue injuries.

I don't mind guys like Maxwell being given a go then being sent away to deal with their deficiencies.
When better than a meaningless dead rubber where the opposition is probably still trying hard for the sake of dignity?
The rotations should cease once the bowling attack gets a bit older and can handle the workload. There must be something up with the fitness program or something with all these guys getting soft tissue injuries.

Um... what? Didn't he make 80 or something? If he's injured then he shouldn't play but his form seems OK.

Maxwell is probably going to be there for India as the second spinner no matter happens in this Sydney match. Hopefully he won't be poo poo.

Watson's average with the bat for the last two years is 28. That would be perfectly fine if he was playing in the lower order as an all-rounder, but he's coming in at number 4 with no ability to get quick singles and twos and no ability to make big scores. He'll probably be kept in the middle order for a while after he gets fit though, the selectors seem obsessed with the idea that everybody needs to be able to bat and bowl.

Hopefully they use the India series to blood a bunch of spin bowlers, one of whom will replace Lyon and turn into Warne II.

I remember when Warne was at his peak and the line that would always come up either in cricket journalism or the match commentary was that all the young kids watching the cricket would want to be as good as Warne and Australia would never be in want of a good spinner again.

The thing with Watson is that on the surface he does the job as an allrounder. Averages a shade over 30 with the ball and a little under 40 with the bat. With a full workload bowling and coming in at 6 or 7 he would be fine for what he is.

From all reports he is struggling bowling at all and is expected to bat in the top four. So what are we left with. A guy with two centuries to his name, who has a very one dimensional batting game. There are other areas about his game that I hate. He's like a tank between the wickets and selfish to the point of parody of a cricketer. I'm surprised he doesn't reach for the drs when he is clean bowled.

I also can't be bothered looking it up but how has his form been since Clarke took over ?

I'd rather a top four of batsmen who can play off the front and back foot. Maybe that's just me.

Edit.

I've been beaten with my Watson rant.

Burn Down Canberra fucked around with this message at Jan 1, 2013 around 08:23

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?

I remember when Warne was at his peak and the line that would always come up either in cricket journalism or the match commentary was that all the young kids watching the cricket would want to be as good as Warne and Australia would never be in want of a good spinner again.

Good to see cricket journalism here is just as bad as our political journalism.

I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question... A shitpost is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don't give it to someone lightly, that's what I would say.

Just got back from the Hobart/Perth game at Bellerieve. Marcus North tried to switch hit twice, hosed both shots up and then got out cheaply playing a conventional shot.

Remember, Ausgoons: no matter how bad off we are now, we could still have that munt in our team.